The Kraken are firing head coach Dave Hakstol, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports. Assistant coach Paul McFarland will also not return to the team next season, the team confirmed.
Speaking to reporters early last week, general manager Ron Francis declined to confirm whether Hakstol would be back with the team in 2024-25 despite a two-year extension kicking in on July 1. Francis released a statement on Hakstol’s firing today:
I thank Dave for his hard work and dedication to the Kraken franchise. Following our end-of-the-season review, we have decided to make a change at our head coach position. These decisions are never easy, but we feel this is a necessary step to help ensure our team continues to improve and evolve. Dave is a good coach and a terrific person. We wish him and his family all the best. We will begin our search for the Kraken’s next head coach immediately.
Hakstol, now 55, was hired as the first head coach in Kraken history in June 2021, four months before the puck dropped on their inaugural season. The former Flyers bench boss had been working on Sheldon Keefe’s bench in Toronto as an assistant after getting fired by Philadelphia in 2018-19, partway through his fourth season with the club.
While the Kraken weren’t able to catch lightning in a bottle like their older expansion siblings, the Golden Knights, they’ve still reached a competitive standard of play in short order. They were nowhere near contention in their inaugural season, finishing with a 27-49-6 record, but the understaffed roster managed decent possession results at even strength in Hakstol’s system and was largely doomed by below-average seasons from goalies Chris Driedger and Philipp Grubauer.
Goaltending didn’t improve much in 2022-23 with Martin Jones entering the fold, but another season of above-average 5-on-5 possession and a second-place 11.6 shooting percentage earned Seattle a 100-point season and, with it, their first playoff berth. Despite missing 40-goal scorer Jared McCann for nearly half of their playoff games, the Kraken upset the defending champion Avalanche in the first round and took the 108-point Stars to seven games in the second before finally bowing out. It showed what the team could do against strong competition with even just average goaltending, supported by Grubauer’s .903 SV% and 2.7 goals saved above expected in 14 games, per MoneyPuck. Hakstol earned a nomination for that year’s Jack Adams Award as a result.
This season saw Joey Daccord give the club some much-needed stability between the pipes, but a major drop in offense (289 GF in 2022-23, 217 GF in 2023-24) doomed the club to a finish just below the .500 mark, 17 points back of a playoff spot. The drop in offense was mainly due to a 2.5% drop in their finishing to 9.1%. Seattle still managed solid possession numbers across the board at 5-on-5, controlling 51.8% of shot attempts, 51.2% of scoring chances and 50.6% of high-danger chances despite top defenseman Vince Dunn and top-six winger André Burakovsky missing significant time with injuries.
Across the board, those results suggest the Kraken are what they’ve been in all three seasons – a solid two-way team without a truly game-breaking offensive talent. It’s hard to fault Hakstol for a roster construction issue, but as Seattle is set to graduate prospects like Ryker Evans and Shane Wright to full-time NHL roles, it’s evident Francis wants a different voice to oversee the club as they shift their aim toward becoming more consistent playoff challengers. They’ll add to an already solid prospect pool with the eighth overall pick in this year’s draft, although that position may change based on the results of next week’s draft lottery.
Luckily for Hakstol, there are plenty of vacancies on the market that he could be considered for. The Blues, Devils, Kings, Senators and Sharks either fired their coach after the season ended or finished the campaign with interim bench bosses without a full-time replacement named.
For Seattle, it’s fair to wonder if Hakstol’s replacement may come from within. Assistant Jay Leach has drawn documented interest for head coaching vacancies in the past and will do so again with multiple positions open. If not, though, the recent rash of coach firings leaves Francis with an experienced list to pick from, as well as multiple up-and-coming candidates like University of Denver head coach David Carle.
Like Hakstol, McFarland had been with the Kraken since their inception. He was previously the GM and head coach of the Ontario Hockey League’s Kingston Frontenacs and has held assistant roles with the Maple Leafs and Panthers.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
I thought I recognized the sound of the other shoe dropping.
Agreed.
Hockey has to be the most cutthroat sport in terms of coach firing. One year you’re in the playoffs and getting an extension and less than a year later you’re gone.
On a side note I wonder if Blysma is going to get the call….
Certainly plausible, although I think they’d prefer to have him keep working his magic in Coachella Valley. He’s been key in helping guys like Evans and Wright stay on track and has helped other depth prospects (Morrison, Winterton, etc.) exceed expectations thus far
Would Ulf Samuelsson get a call as he and Francis played together..
Maybe, but he hasn’t had a job the past two seasons, is 60 and lives in Scottsdale. Sounds to me like a guy that’s content in retirement. Since SEA was willing to fire Hakstol with two years left on his deal, too, that tells me they’re going after a bigger fish.
Who are you thinking?
Leach would make sense to me as I mentioned in the article. If you’re looking for a retread, though, take your pick. I don’t think David Quinn or Don Granato makes a ton of sense for where Seattle wants to go – again, especially if you’re firing Hakstol before his extension even took effect, you want someone with more of a recent winning track record. Being willing to pay out Hakstol in order to get your hands on David Carle, say, before anyone else, makes sense to me. Michael Russo also wonders about Dean Evason: link to twitter.com
Would Turk Gallant get a interview or a thought.. as he was one of the original guys to be the 1st coach..
I could absolutely see that, just haven’t heard his name much yet this summer
He is enjoying time with his Family and grandkids but he would take another shot at coaching but it will be his decision on where. I still think Anaheim is a good fit too..
I’m hoping Francis has something else in mind than putting someone who was removed from behind the bench last season back into the captain’s chair.
I’m glad. Good luck to those guys in their future pursuits of course.
So they signed him to an extension, Then fired him. Riiiiiggggghhhhhttttt! They should fire the guy who gave it to him also, Just to be fair.
Agreed. Can you imagine a human resource manager that fired an employee eight months after signing him to a two-year contract? Hakstol was making $2 million/year in 2019, so he’s making around $2.5 million now, and the club owners are dishing out $2.5 million for next year.
The GM’s annual job evaluation must be done at a bar…
Ron Francis sucks as GM but places the blame on the coach. Hopefully he continues to fail and gets canned himself.
Agreed. It’s not like Hakstol had much to work with. The team was more competitive than originally expected with what little he had to work with. And Francis hasn’t done much to add scoring since the expansion draft either. Hard to win when you refuse to go for the big guns, then you go and blame it on your coach? Hah!
So much NCAA success, so little NHL success. Seems like a good dude though.
Two years pay–very nice severance deal. I had a former employer who gave me ten days of unused vacation time.
Could he be on the Blues coaching list?
would never take a job unless there is a true franchise goalie tween the pipes .. flyers didn’t have one .. neither did the kraken .. but I guess Francis won’t fire himself
He gets fired because Team played to their true talent level.
100% correct. Read an article stating that GMs learned after Las Vegas what players to make available and that Seattle would be starved for talent. Francis has not drafted or traded well, so he points fingers at the coach he hired.